Sony’s Yoshida calls VR an “Ultimate Weapon” for Developers

PlayStation VR, previously known as Sony’s Project Morpheus, is prepping to launch in the first half of 2016. According to President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida, PS VR’s early lineup is looking strong, and he believes VR tech is going to be a massive new world for gaming.

“Every game developer tries to create something new, amazing, and innovative to wow people,” Yoshida told Stuff. “Using VR tech, it’s so easy, it’s almost unfair. It’s like an ultimate weapon. I think it’s going to be a hugely powerful weapon for game developers to create new and exciting experiences for consumers.”

Yoshida went on to explain that even a small VR project can impress if developers have a good concept: “Because VR is such a new media, you can create totally amazing experiences with very very limited resources if you have the right idea. One of the examples is a soccer game called Headmaster. It’s developed by a small indie developer, but everybody still really enjoyed it.”

As for PS VR’s early lineup, Yoshida believes the launch will come with a great variety of games. “From now till launch, we still have a lot of time, and I’ve been encouraging small developers by telling them that even if they start now, with the right idea they’ll still be able to get the game done in time for the launch of PS VR,” he shared. “And some of them are reacting to that, so I have am very optimistic of the variety of games and experiences that will be available at launch.”

Towards the end of the interview, Yoshida briefly discussed the challenges of PS4 development, and why it results in a number of game delays. With the transition from PS3 to PS4, “there are many more things that teams are finding that they can do, and lots of games are trying to provide an open world setting.” These larger experiences take a considerable amount of time to develop, he says, and “sometimes we have to spend more time than we were originally hoping for, and what the team considers is achievable within a certain budget and time, turns out not to be the case.”